The problem was that she had no idea.
One minute she’d been making her way back from the bakery up the street—early, because it was Mardi Gras, and there would be tons of tourist dickweeds otherwise—and the next thing she knew, it was as if a light had just shut off inside her head. Usually, she knew where every dead body lay for miles around, and she often had zombie bugs and birds moving about keeping an eye on things. And today had been no different, until the lights went out.
She’d been “blind” for a few hours, and then, just as abruptly, her power was back. Truth be told, she’d been out of her mind while her power was gone. And she’d been scared. Really scared. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been this frightened. Yes, you can remember that time, whispered a voice in the back of her mind. But Joey shut that thought down hard and fast—or tried to. What did your mother say about lying? the voice persisted. Well, she’d lied, too, Joey reminded herself. Her mother had lied, and left Joey alone, and what had happened after that …
Then Bubbles had shown up on her caller ID, and Joey had been relieved. Bubbles was the most powerful person she knew. Bubbles would keep her safe.
But when Joey picked up the phone, Bubbles started giving her shit. But Joey didn’t know what had happened. And if she was being honest with herself, she was scared. What if she was losing her power?
Without her children, she wasn’t safe. Without them, she was just Joey Hebert, not Hoodoo Mama. Without Hoodoo Mama, no one, not even Bubbles, could protect her.
And when she thought about what not being Hoodoo Mama anymore would mean, she began to shake.
There wasn’t much that Adesina didn’t like. She liked American ice cream, American TV, and American beds. Ever since Momma had brought her to America, Adesina had been making a list of all the things she liked.
She liked Hello Kitty, the Cartoon Network, and taking classes from a tutor (even though sometimes she missed being in school with other kids). She even liked the way the cities looked. They were so big and shiny, and everyone talked so fast and moved around like they were all in a big rush to get somewhere important. Even if it was just to go to the grocery store.
And she liked Momma’s friends. Aunt Joey (even though when they’d lived together in the PPA, Momma had kept yelling at Aunt Joey about her language), Aunt Juliette, Drake (even though he was a god now and they never saw him anymore), and Niobe. Sometimes they were invited to American Hero events, and she got to meet even more wild carders. But she liked Joker Town the best of all because no one there ever turned around and stared at her.
And she had liked being in the Joker Town Halloween parade with Momma, but she didn’t like this parade now at all. Aunt Joey’s zombies had attacked, and people were hurt. So they were going to Aunt Joey’s, and Adesina knew Momma was mad. She didn’t need to go into Momma’s mind to know that. It was pretty obvious.
Once, she and Momma had had a conversation about her ability to enter Momma’s mind. Momma had made her promise she wouldn’t do it anymore, but it was difficult to control. Once she’d gone into someone’s mind, it became easier. She couldn’t go into nats’ minds—only people whose card had turned. She’d discovered that while they were still in the PPA.
And she wasn’t going to tell Momma that she had already been in more people’s minds than Momma knew. Sometimes it just happened when she was dreaming, but mostly it happened if she liked someone. The next thing she knew, she was sliding into their thoughts.
The police and ambulances came. The ambulance took the wounded away, and the police cleared out the crowd so the parade could head back to the storage facility. There was no more music, no more beads thrown, and no more bubbles.
Adesina didn’t mean to, but she found herself in Momma’s mind. Momma was worried. Worried about Aunt Joey and what she might have to do to her if Aunt Joey really had made her zombies attack. She was worried about Adesina and how much violence she was around. And she was worried about the people who’d been hurt at the parade.
Adesina wanted to tell her that zombies weren’t as bad as being in the charnel pit. And that that wasn’t as bad as what had happened to her after she’d been injected with the virus and her card had turned. Even though Adesina’s mind wanted to skitter away from that memory, it rose up. She couldn’t—wouldn’t—forget what had happened.
The doctors had grabbed her and strapped her down to the table with brown leather straps that were stained almost black in places. Then they slid a needle full of the wild card virus into her arm. She’d looked away and stared up at the sweet, fairy-tale pictures they’d put on the stark white walls. But the girls in the pictures were all pale, not at all like Adesina.
The virus burned as it rocketed through her veins. She looked away from the smiling children in the pictures and stared at the ceiling. There were reddish-brown splatter marks there. Then blinding pain swallowed her and she was wracked with convulsions. Her body bowed up from the table. She tried not to, but she screamed and screamed and screamed. And then there was darkness and relief when she’d gone into chrysalis form.
The doctors didn’t want Jokers, they wanted only Aces, and so they threw her body into the pit with the other dead and dying children. But she wasn’t dying. She was changing. And while she was cradled in her cocoon, she found that she could slip into the minds of other people infected with the virus.
That was how she’d found Momma. Both of them were floating in a sea of darkness. But Adesina wasn’t lonely anymore, not now that she had Momma.
But if she said anything about that time, Momma would know she’d been in her mind. So she grabbed Momma and made her sit on the throne and cuddled in her lap until the parade came to its final stop.
Bullets flew across the smoking landscape, past the charred and burned wreckage of tanks and jeeps. A grenade exploded next to Dan, and he took a massive amount of damage. His health bar was blinking red, and he was out of bandages.
“Jesus, RocketPac, you were supposed to take that bitch with the grenade launcher out,” Dan snarled into his mic. He’d logged on as soon as he’d gotten home from the parade. “You fucking faggot.”
“Suck my dick, CF,” Rocket replied. Feedback screamed into Dan’s headset. “If you’d given me the suppressing fire, I could have gotten close enough to get a shot off. Go blow a goat, you asshole.”
“Turn down your fucking outbound mic, bitch,” Teninchrecord said to Rocket. “And your goddamn speakers, you big homo. CF, tell me again why the fuck we let this useless scrub onto the team.”
Dan fell back. He’s been using a bombed-out building for cover, but it was clear it wasn’t doing any good. And he needed to find some bandages. If they made it out of this without losing, he was going to kick that useless POS RocketPac off the team. He couldn’t figure out how this team he’d never heard of was pwning them. Especially since they had the utterly fag team name We Know What Boys Like.
A shadow passed in front of the TV. Dan jumped and dropped his controller. “What the fuck!”
“Mr. Turnbull, we need to talk,” Mr. Jones said as he picked up the controller and handed it to Dan. He wore a sleek dark grey suit, a white shirt, and a black tie. No one Dan knew ever wore anything like that. Dan was certain Jones wasn’t his real name, but he could identify with not wanting everyone to know who you were. And Dan didn’t want any more information than necessary about Mr. Jones.
He was afraid of Mr. Jones because Mr. Jones looked like he could snap Dan’s neck without blinking an eye. Mr. Jones reminded Dan of a coiled rattlesnake.
Dan ripped off his headphones and yanked the headphone jack out of his computer. “That’s a voice-activated mic,” he snapped, but his hands were trembling. “I don’t want those dipshits knowing who I am in real life. And I told my dad no one was supposed to come down here when the sign was up.”
Mr. Jones shrugged. “Your father isn’t home and I don’t care about your little game,” he said.
“I did what you asked,” Dan said more defensively than he wanted. “I’ve got the video here on this USB drive.” He stood up and dug around in his pocket until he came up with the lint-speckled drive.
Mr. Jones plucked it from Dan’s fingers, then delicately blew off the lint. “I doubt we’ll need it,” Mr. Jones said, slipping the drive into the breast pocket of his suit. “There are already more than fifty YouTube videos up. More going up by the minute. And the local news interrupted programming to report on it. CNN and Fox are running breaking-news tickers, and we know they’re working up their own spin on things. You did well.”
Dan didn’t know what to say. He was both flattered and scared. “Uh, thanks,” he replied, and jammed his hands into his pockets. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that his CntrlFreak avatar was down. Shit.
“We may need you to do another small task for us,” Mr. Jones said. He held out a thick manila envelope. “The payment. And a little extra.”
A tingle slid up Dan’s spine as he took the envelope. He thought about touching Mr. Jones’s fingers to see if he was an Ace but, for the first time, it occurred to him that he might be out of his depth. “Sure, dude, whatever,” he said. “But coming to my house, uh, maybe we could meet somewhere else?”
Mr. Jones’s smile was shockingly white against his dark skin. “Looks like your team lost,” he said, nodding at the monitor. “Combat Over” flashed on the screen. “I’ll see myself out.”
Dan took a long, shuddering breath when he heard the front door close. Then he opened the envelope and started counting.
The cab pulled to a stop in front of Joey’s house. Michelle paid the driver, and she and Adesina got out. The house was a dilapidated Victorian with peeling paint and an overgrown garden surrounded by a wrought-iron fence. Dead birds nested in the trees and perched on the utility lines. In unison, they all cocked their heads to the left.
“Knock it off, Joey,” Michelle said as she opened the gate. It gave a screeching complaint. Has she never heard of WD-40? Even I know about that. “Save it for the tourists.”
“Caw,” said one of the birds.
“Jerk,” Michelle muttered.
A relatively fresh female zombie answered the door. She wore a cheerful floral print dress and was less filthy than most of Joey’s corpses. The dead don’t groom, Michelle thought. They are so nasty.
“Follow me,” the zombie said. But it was Joey’s voice Michelle heard. All the zombies had Joey’s voice, and that was okay when the zombie was a woman. But it was weird as hell coming from a six-foot-tall former linebacker, as it sometimes happened.
“For crying out loud, Joey,” Michelle said. “I know every inch of this house. You in the living room?”
The zombie nodded and Michelle pushed past it. Adesina flew up to Michelle’s shoulder. “Momma, don’t be too mad,” she whispered.
“I’m just the right amount of mad,” Michelle replied. Then she sighed, paused, and tried to get her mood under control. Adesina was right. Joey never responded well to an angry confrontation. Angry was Joey’s stock-in-trade.
The living room was mostly bare. There were tatty curtains on the windows and a sagging couch against one wall. The new addition to the room was a large flat-screen TV. Across from the TV was Joey’s Hoodoo Mama throne with Joey perched on it. She was slightly built and was wearing a shapeless Joker Plague T-shirt and skinny jeans. There was a shock of red in her dark brown hair and her skin was a beautiful caramel color. A zombie dog lay at her feet, and two huge male zombies flanked her chair.
Michelle and Adesina flopped on the couch. Joey frowned, but Michelle ignored it. “So, you want to explain what happened?”
The zombies growled, and then Joey said, “I had fuck-all to do with it.” Her hands were gripping the arms of her throne, and her knuckles had turned white. “I can’t believe you think I’d do something like that.”
“Are you saying there’s another person whose card has turned, who lives in New Orleans, and who can raise the dead just like you?” Michelle gave Joey her very best “Seriously, what the hell?” look. “That’s a lot of coincidences, Joey.”
“No, there’s not a new fucking wild card who can control zombies,” Joey said leaning forward on her throne. “There’s one who can fucking well snatch powers.”
“Jesus, Joey, language.” Michelle glanced at Adesina, but she was already engrossed in a game on her iPad.
“Oh, fuck you, Bubbles,” Joey said. “Adesina has heard it all and more. Haven’t you, Pumpkin?”
Adesina glanced up and shrugged. “Yep. You cuss. A lot. But I’m not going to.”
For a moment, Joey looked hurt. “Michelle, are you planting weird fucking ideas in my girl there?”
“No, just normal ones.”
“That’s a goddamn fool’s errand for a Joker.”
Michelle glared at Joey. “Back to your mystery wild card,” she said. “What makes you think your powers were snatched? Maybe you just lost control.”
The two big male zombies started across the room towards Michelle. Calmly, she dispatched them with a couple of tiny, explosive bubbles to the head. It took her last reserves of fat, but she wasn’t putting up with any more of Joey’s aggressive zombie shit.
“Motherfucker! Goddamnit, Bubbles, look at this dick-licking mess! Christ!” The female zombie came in and began cleaning up the remains. “I’m fucking fine,” Joey continued. “What happened wasn’t my cocksucking fault. I went out to get some pastries at the bakery. On my way home, I bumped into someone, then bang, my power just went away and I couldn’t see any of my children anymore.”
Her voice trailed off, and she looked so sad and scared that Michelle believed her. Michelle knew that Joey’s card had turned because she’d been raped. But she didn’t know any details and really didn’t want to know them. She imagined that Joey must have felt as helpless now as she had then.
“Do you remember anything specific about how your powers were stolen?” Michelle asked. A wild card who could grab powers was frightening to contemplate. They needed to figure out who it was. But even more, she needed to protect Joey from having her powers stolen again. Joey had never been especially emotionally stable—Michelle reminded herself that a lot of the wild carders she knew were just shy of permanent residence in Crazytown—but seeing Joey’s reaction now worried Michelle. Whatever having her power grabbed was triggering in Joey was bad. And Michelle was beginning to think it might be more important to help Joey deal than to get the person yanking her power.
Joey shook her head. “Fuck me, I’ve tried. I just remember being jostled, then … nothing.”
Adesina tugged on Michelle’s arm. “Momma, look,” she said, pointing at the TV.
There was a long shot of the Bacchus parade as the zombies were attacking. The image zoomed in on Michelle as she began killing zombies. Joey turned up the volume on the TV.
“—ack on today’s Bacchus parade. Michelle Pond, the Amazing Bubbles, was on one float and was the apparent target of the zombie attack. More horrifying is that Miss Pond had her seven-year-old daughter with her. Though Miss Pond managed to stop the attack, it is troubling that she had her daughter at an event where she would be exposed to such adult sights as women showing their naked breasts for beads. This isn’t the first time that a public event featuring Miss Pond has turned violent. It does make one wonder about her choices.”
Michelle jumped up from the couch. “What the fuck!” she yelled.
“Language,” Joey said.
Adesina was worried. Momma was looking at videos of the parade on her laptop. Aunt Joey had switched off the TV after the news report, but Momma had pulled her laptop out of her bag and started looking for more reports online.
She’d found a lot of them. And even though Adesina tried not to, she couldn’t help slipping into Momma’s mind. And what she saw there was fear and anger and worry.
So she slipped out and started playing Ocelot Nine on her iPad again. Getting Organza Sweetie Ocelot out of the clutches of the Cherry Witch was easier than understanding the workings of the adult world.
Michelle’s cell was buzzing. It had been buzzing since the attack on the parade. But she’d been ignoring the calls—she already knew things were screwed. The old adage “There’s no such thing as bad publicity” was complete crap in her experience.
But she hadn’t realized just how bad it was until she saw the news reports at Joey’s house. And then she’d gone on YouTube and saw all the amateur videos.
It made her sick. Of course there is going to be video everywhere, you idiot. It was Mardi Gras. Hell, it’s just the way things are now. Not a moment unobserved.
And there was still the issue of how Joey had lost her powers. More to the point, Joey’s reaction to losing her powers was preying on Michelle’s mind. She couldn’t leave Joey alone in that state. Michelle decided she and Adesina would stay with Joey tonight and try to figure out what had happened. Much as she hated even considering it, Michelle thought she might have to ask Adesina for help. But God, she didn’t want to do that. She didn’t want to send her baby into Joey’s mind. There were things Adesina did not need to see at her age—or any other age, as far as Michelle was concerned.
Since Michelle had decided that Joey shouldn’t be alone for even an hour, the three of them cabbed it back to Michelle’s hotel. Both Joey and Adesina were hungry, so Michelle left them in the hotel coffee shop while she went up to the room to pack a bag.
She slipped out of her dress and tossed it onto the bed. Then she pulled on a pair of baggy drawstring pants and a T-shirt. She needed to get fatter—throwing herself off Joey’s roof hadn’t done much—and her clothes needed to cooperate with a variety of sizes.
As she was packing an overnight bag, her cell began to ring again. She grabbed it off the bed and glanced at the number. It looked familiar, so she answered it saying, “Michelle here.” She threw underwear, baggy pants, and T-shirts for herself into the bag, and then tossed in Adesina’s favorite dress and nightgown.
There was a pause on the other end of the line. “Hey, Michelle. It’s me.” For a moment, Michelle’s stomach lurched. It was Juliette. They hadn’t spoken much since Juliette had left the PPA. And when they had, it was awkward. Sleeping with Joey had ruined Michelle’s relationship with Juliette. And no matter how she tried, Michelle knew that there were some mistakes that couldn’t be forgiven. “I saw some of the footage from the parade online,” Juliette said.
Michelle’s hands started shaking. Crap, crap, crap. She thought. This is not the time to get emotional.
“Yeah, it, uh, was intense.”
“Was it really Joey?”
Michelle went into the bathroom and started grabbing toiletries. “She says no and I believe her,” Michelle said. “This just isn’t her style. She says someone stole her power, and right after the attack, her power came back.”
There was another long pause. “So, you’ve been seeing her while you’re there?”
Crap, Michelle thought again as she dumped the toiletries into a travel case. Then she released a stream of rubbery bubbles into the bathtub. A couple bounced out and rolled around the bathroom floor. Michelle kicked them, and they ricocheted off the wall. One hit her hard in the thigh.
“Yes, I went to see her,” Michelle replied, reflexively rubbing her leg. Stupid bubbles. “Hello? Zombie attack. Who else am I going to see?” She went to the mirror and looked into it. Stupid girl. “We’re not screwing, if that’s what you’re asking. And we haven’t since that one time. And you broke up with me and I’m pretty sure that means I’m allowed to see anyone I like. And I’m really sorry.”
Shit.
“You done?” Juliette asked.
“Yes,” Michelle said meekly.
“I’m glad you went to see her. This thing is a PR disaster for both of you.”
This flummoxed Michelle. “I thought, well, I mean …”
“Look, Michelle, this isn’t about you and Joey and me. This is about Adesina. You suck as a girlfriend, but you’ve been a good mother to her. And I really hate the idea that someone’s playing a political game that’ll impact on Adesina’s life.”
Michelle slid down the bathroom wall and sat on the floor. The tiles were cold against her butt.
“I’m not sure what you mean. Why would this affect Adesina?”
An exasperated sigh, not unlike the one Adesina often gave, escaped Juliette. “How can you still be this naive? You’re too damn powerful and too damn popular. They can’t do much about the powerful, but they will happily destroy people’s fondness for you. They need to marginalize you.”
Michelle opened her left palm and let a light bubble form in it. She let it go and it floated around the bathroom. “Well, who would do that? And why use Joey?”
“Oh, it could be a lot of people: the NSA, CIA, and the PPA, for starters. Also, the Committee might be involved, though that’s less likely. It could even be an entirely new group with their own agenda. And it’s tough to come at you directly, but going through people you love …”
“I don’t love Joey,” Michelle said emphatically. What she wanted to say was “I love you. Please come back.” Instead she said, “I’ve been off the radar for almost a year. It doesn’t make any sense.” Michelle rubbed her middle finger between her eyebrows.
“But you’re back and already you’re doing parades that remind people how you saved New Orleans. Not to mention that you adopted Adesina, who is just about the most adorable Joker in the world.”
Michelle smiled. “Yeah, she is filled with adorableness, isn’t she? I think she has a creamy chocolate center, too.”
Juliette laughed, and Michelle thought her heart might break. “I’m gonna e-mail you a link to something,” Juliette said. “This is what’s at stake and how far they’re willing to go to marginalize you.”
Will this bullshit never stop? Michelle thought. I’m just trying to have a life. “Thanks for the help, Juliette. And … I’m sorry. I know it’s not enough, but I’m really sorry.”
There was another long pause. “Yeah, I know,” Juliette said. Then the line went dead. Great, Michelle thought, rubbing away tears. Just great. You’re never going to make the Joey thing up to her, so stop trying. You’re lucky she even called.
But Michelle knew Juliette hadn’t called for her sake. She got up and ran cold water over a washcloth and held it against her face for a few minutes. The last thing she needed was Adesina seeing that she’d been crying. Her daughter saw too much anyway.
Even though her power was back, Joey was still grateful that Michelle was spending the night. She had her children, of course. But now there was the nagging fear that at any moment someone could grab her power.
Adesina was sitting on the coach playing that goofy game. What the fuck are ocelots, anyway? Joey thought as she sat down next to her. “So, you really like this game?” Joey asked. She wasn’t a fan of video games, but she’d played a few here and there.
Adesina nodded. “The ocelots are really cute, and Organza Sweetie Ocelot is amazing. She has these cool powers and she just goes right after the Cherry Witch who wants to take all the ocelots’ food and land …”
Joey tuned Adesina out. It was something she did on occasion. She just stopped listening and let herself slide into her children. There were dead dogs and cats. Dead people. Dead insects. She moved into them all, seeing through their dead eyes. Her children were the reason she was safe. No one could escape the dead. They were all around. So no one could get the drop on her.
But losing her powers for a few hours had been horrible. She tried to push away the memory of losing control—but that made another, darker, memory come to the surface. Bile rose in her throat, and sweat broke out across her back. No, she wouldn’t let it come back. She was Hoodoo Mama. She’d already killed that motherfucker. That was over and done—he couldn’t touch her anymore.
“Aunt Joey! Aunt Joey!”